The Shape of Things
New music for violin
PGMaudio – the label started, owned and run by Canadian composer, laptop performer and sound engineer Piotr Grella-Możejko [pron. Pyotr Grella-Mozheyko] – is proud to announce Tatiana Warszynski’s solo CD whose programme centres on the solo violin works by Canadian and European composers. One of Canada’s outstanding promoters of New Classical Music, Tatiana has commissioned, performed and recorded dozens of Canadian and international new works. This CD marks her album-length solo debut. Her previous CD with the Warszynski Trio, « Devil’s Dance », is available from the Canadian Music Centre. The CD comprises works by eight composers representing various sources of inspiration, techniques, and styles.
Erin Rogers’s « The Shape of Things » depicts a state of ponderance, where shapes take form through sound, alternating between logical and emotional, their weight, gravity and consequence telling a story from start to finish.
Mark Nerenberg’s « Resonance » consists of six movements. Formally, the piece is inspired by the Baroque suite, though the underpinnings of structure continually fluctuate between tradition and modernity. Layers of resonance, created by a quasi-ostinato of open strings, interact with contrapuntal elements throughout.
Kristin Flores’s « Horizon » is made up of two sections entitled ‘Sunset’ and ‘Sunrise’. Horizon is a programmatic work: the sunset is depicted by an overwhelming sense of calm and tranquility, while the sunrise bursts forth with brilliant energy.
Stanisław Moryto’s « Aria e corale » is one of his most popular works, an imaginary transcription, as it were, of a vocal aria in ABA form, then followed by a mournful chorale. Introverted expression alluding to J. S. Bach on the one hand and the Romantics on the other prevails in this masterly designed piece.
According to Diane Berry, « Reflections 1 » can have multiple meanings: the reflections of sun on water, of the landscape surrounding the water, reflections in a mirror, in a pane of glass, and the reflections in your mind – and the piece tries to evoke all of those.
Aleksander Lasoń’s 2nd Violin Sonata “Jewish” was inspired by Hebrew music, especially its melismatic character and scalar characteristics. The sonata is in four movements, which to a large extent explore the very same material. It is credit to the composer’s craft that in spite of this rigorous unity, the music sounds fascinatingly fresh and absorbing.
Veronika Krausas’s « Inside the Stone » was inspired by the poetry of Canadian author Gwendolyn MacEwen, namely a line from one of her poems: What lives inside the stone? According to Juan Eduardo Cirlot, stones are a symbol for being, of cohesion and harmonious reconciliation with self. The music seeks to evoke that.
Piotr Grella-Możejko’s « Kristall-Träume I-III » was written between 2006 (I) and 2018 (II, III) for three friends. The piece makes uncanonical use of the twelve-tone technique, here serving as a tool permitting to compose music of growing polyphonic complexity, from double-stops to chords, in an idiom rooted in functional harmony.